The four Visegrad states — Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia (until 1993 Czechoslovakia) and Hungary — form a compact area between Germany and Austria in the west and the states of the former USSR in the east. They are bounded by the Baltic in the north and the Danube river in the south. They are cut by the Sudeten and Carpathian mountain ranges, which divide Poland off from the other states. Poland is an extension of the North European plain and like the latter is drained by rivers that flow from south to north west — the Oder, the Vlatava and the Elbe, the Vistula and the Bug. The Danube is the great exception, flowing from its source eastward, turning through two 90-degree turns to end up in the Black Sea, forming the barrier and often the political frontier between central Europe and the Balkans. Hungary to the east of the Danube is also an open plain. The region is historically and culturally part of western Europe, but its eastern Marches now represents a vital strategic zone between Germany and the core of the European Union to the west and the Russian zone to the east.

Economy and Society

Mind, Self and Society from the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist

On Symbolic Interactionism

Interaction ritual chains

This book completes Margaret Archer's trilogy investigating the role of reflexivity in mediating between structure and agency. What do young people want from life? Using analysis of family experiences and life histories, her argument respects the properties and powers of both structures and agents and presents the 'internal conversation' as the site of their interplay. In unpacking what 'social conditioning' means, Archer demonstrates the usefulness of 'relational realism'. She advances a new theory of relational socialisation, appropriate to the 'mixed messages' conveyed in families that are rarely normatively consensual and thus cannot provide clear guidelines for action. Life-histories are analysed to explain the making and breaking of the various modes of reflexivity. Different modalities have been dominant from early societies to the present and the author argues that modernity is slowly ceding place to a 'morphogenetic society' as meta-reflexivity now begins to predominate, at least amongst educated young people.

The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity

This article presents a relational criticism of the “morphogenetic theory” of M. Archer. This theory is founded and representative of the most influential mode of perception of the social universe of the last few decades: co-determinism (structure ↔ agency). Co-determinism's influence can be explained by its integration of modern general presuppositions like freedom, individualism, and the quest for a new social order. By identifying five basic principles of relational sociology, we see that Archer's co-deterministic theory offers a complicated solution to avoid voluntarism and co-determinism, limits the potential of sociological imagination, cannot adequately see the fluidity of social processes, produces a certain reification of social structures and agency, and is based on an inconsistent use of egocentric and relational perspectives. These problems can be avoided if we use a relational approach (actor ↔ actor ⇒ structures) based on the study of complex and empirical trans-actions.

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Relational Thinking: A Critique of Co-Deterministic Theories of Structure and Agency*:

EAD, SERRES, SIMMEL, SOMERS, TARDE, TILLY, LUHMANN, WHITE, CROSSLEY, DÉPELTEAU, DONATI, EMIRBAYER, FUHSE, BOURDIEU, COLLINS, DELEUZE, LATOUR, MAUSS, MANN, MEAD, SERRES, SIMMEL, SOMERS, TARDE, TILLY, LUHMANN, WHITE, CROSSLEY, DÉPELTEAU, DONATI, EMIRBAYER, FUHSE, BOURDIEU, COLLINS, DELEUZE, LATOUR, MAUSS, MANN, MEAD, SERRES, SIMMEL, SOMERS, TARDE, TILLY, LUHMANN, WHITE, CROSSLEY, DÉPELTEAU, DONATI, EMIRBAYER, FUHSE, BOURDIEU, COLLINS, DELEUZE, LATOUR, MAUSS, MANN, MEAD, SERRES, SIMMEL, SOMERS, TARDE, TILLY, LUHMANN, WHITE, CROSSLEY, DÉPELTEAU, DONATI, EMIRBAYER, FUHSE, BOURDIEU, COLLINS, DELEUZE, LATOUR, MAUSS, MANN, MEAD, SERRES, SIMMEL, SOMERS, TARDE, TILLY, LUHMANN, WHITE, CROSSLEY, DÉPELTEAU, DONATI, EMIRBAYER, FUHSE, BOURDIEU, COLLINS, DELEUZE, LATOUR, MAUSS, MANN, MEAD, SERRES, SIMMEL, SOMERS, TARDE, TILLY, LUHMANN, WHITE, CROSSLEY, DÉPELTEAU, DONATI, EMIRBAYER, FUHSE, BOURDIEU, COLLINS, DELEUZE, LATOUR, MAUSS, MANN, MEAD, SERRES, SIMMEL, SOMERS, TARDE, TILLY, LUHMANN, WHITE, CROSSLEY, DÉPELTEAU, DONATI, EMIRBAYER, FUHSE, BOURDIEU, COLLINS, DELEUZE, LATOUR, MAUSS, MANN, WHITE, CROSSLEY, DÉPELTEAU, DONATI, EMIRBAYER, FUHSE,

The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology

Starting from the idea that relational sociology has been founded on various and incompatible social ontologies, I argue that it is at risk of losing its raison d'etre if we do not answer two fundamental practical and ontological questions: (1) Why do we need relational sociology? and (2) What do we study in relational sociology? In this respect, I propose a deep, transactional sociology partly and freely inspired by the work of J. Dewey which clearly detaches relational sociology from social determinism and co-determinism.

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Relational sociology, pragmatism, transactions and social fields

Introduction Francois Depelteau and Christopher Powell PART I: DEFINING THE PROJECT 1 Collective Reflexivity: A Relational Case for it Margaret Archer 2 Interactions and Juxtapositions: Conceptualizing 'Relations' in Relational Sociology Nick Crossley 3 From interactions between structures and actors to social transactions Francois Depelteau 4 Relational Sociology: A Paradigm from a Critical Realist Standpoint Pierpaolo Donati 5 Radical Relationism Christopher Powell PART II: RELATIONISM AND SOCIAL THEORY 6 Relational Sociology and Historical Materialism: Three Conversation Starters Ken Fish 7 Bourdieu's Relational Method in Theory and Practice John W Mohr 8 Feminist Preludes to Relational Sociology Sarah Redshaw 9 Critical Strategies for Implementing a Relational Sociological Paradigm: Elias, Bourdieu, and Uncivilized Sociological Theoretical Struggles Christopher Thorpe 10 Norbert Elias on Relations: Insights and Perspectives Charalambos Tsekeris PART III: PERMUTATIONS AND APPLICATIONS 11 Power from Switching Across Netdoms through Reflexive and Indexical Language Jorge Fontdevila and Harrison C White 12 Social Relationships between Communication, Network Structure, and Culture Jan Fuhse 13 Turning points are the rule rather than the exception: perspective on the different forms of uncertainty Harrison C White, Frederic C Godart, and Matthias Thiemann 14 Advancing Sociology Through a Focus on Relational Processes Debbie Kasper 15 Survival units as the point of departure for a relational sociology Lars Bo Kasperson 16 Human Transaction Mechanisms in Evolutionary Niches-a Methodological Relationalist Standpoint Osmo Kivinen and Tero Piiroinen 17 Objects, Agency and Relational Sociology Craig McFarlane 18 Connecting Network Methods to Social Science Research: How To Parsimoniously Use Dyadic Measures as Independent Variables Heather Price Relational Sociology, Social Psychology, and Social Neuroscience Stephen Quilley Conclusion Mustafa Emirbayer

François Dépelteau

Papers

Relational Thinking: A Critique of Co-Deterministic Theories of Structure and Agency*:

The Palgrave Handbook of Relational Sociology

Relational sociology, pragmatism, transactions and social fields

Conceptualizing relational sociology : ontological and theoretical issues

Conceptualizing Relational Sociology